Quiet reversal from Davis on profiling / Lawsuit's dismissal reveals order to cops to collect data

Published 4:00 am, Friday, January 25, 2002

Gov. Gray Davis, quietly reversing his position on a racial profiling dispute, has ordered police who get a share of a new $3 million state subsidy to collect more information on vehicle stops and searches.

Davis' turnaround, which came on Jan. 9, surfaced yesterday when a state appellate court in San Francisco dismissed a suit by civil rights groups that accused the governor of illegally changing the state budget to reduce the data- collection requirements on police.

The court agreed with the state's lawyers that the case was moot because the goal of the lawsuit had been accomplished. An attorney for the organizations that filed the suit last November said he would have preferred a ruling on the merits of the case.

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"It's a 100 percent victory on the racial profiling issue," said attorney Scott Kronland. "We would have liked to see an opinion on the legality" of Davis' move last summer to change the requirements attached to the money "because we believe it's an important legal issue that's going to recur."

Davis spokesman Byron Tucker said the governor had changed his position only after the California Highway Patrol advised him that the disputed information would not be expensive to collect.

"He said he was not going to impose these additional costs on local police agencies without providing funding to complete the task," Tucker said. "Now that the CHP believes the data can be collected at a nominal cost, the governor has directed them to do so."

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His comments reflect the content of two letters sent earlier this month: one on Jan. 8 from CHP Commissioner Spike Helmick to Davis, saying the costs had been reconsidered, and another the next day from a Davis aide back to Helmick ordering the change -- an action that effectively nullified the governor's budget veto of last July.

Tucker said the action was a "procedural move" that Davis saw no need to announce publicly.

Davis, a close ally of police organizations, has fought civil rights groups over attempts to determine whether minority drivers are stopped and searched disproportionately. He vetoed a bill in 1999 that would have required all police departments to compile racial and ethnic information on vehicle stops, saying it would be too burdensome. He later signed legislation requiring police training to prevent racial profiling.

The 2001-02 budget passed by the Legislature contained $3 million in grants for police departments that collect specific data on each vehicle stop: the driver's race and ethnicity, the reason for the stop, whether the driver was searched, what was found and whether an arrest was made.

Davis left the $3 million virtually intact but vetoed all the data- collecting requirements except race and ethnicity, saying the additional requirements were expensive and might discourage departments from applying for the money.

The California branches of the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens argued in the lawsuit that Davis had no authority to change the requirements accompanying money in the budget. They also said the veto undermined the anti-profiling effort by providing funds to police departments that do not report why minority drivers were stopped and whether they were searched.

The Court of Appeal halted the state financing program hours after the suit was filed. Yesterday's order releases the money on the terms originally prescribed by the Legislature.